I went to a talk at the 2018 Bird Fair by the author when he talked about the preparation of this book – and now here it is. It’s a fine field guide. And it really is a field guide – a slim volume that can easily be pocketed in a coat and brought out…
Category: BOOK REVIEWS
Sunday book review – Peak District by Penny Anderson
This is a standard New Naturalist – a series of books that doesn’t feel very new, or at all ground-breaking these days. Penny Anderson gives a workpersonlike account of the wildlife and ecology of this area, mostly a National Park, and the habitats it includes. There is mention of raptor persecution. Hen Harrier appears in…
Sunday book review – Children of the Anthropocene by Bella Lack
This is a book written by an 18-year-old environmentalist – and it’s being reviewed here by a 64-year-old environmentalist. Forty-six years ago there weren’t books of this sort written by undergraduates and I’m very glad that I didn’t have one published then because I suspect that it would be an embarrassing read with the benefit…
Sunday book review – In Search of One Last Song by Patrick Galbraith
This book, out of 55 I reviewed in 2022, was the title I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org…
Sunday book review – Saving Eden by Kevin Corcoran
I hadn’t heard of The Gearagh until I received this book. I can be forgiven for that, perhaps, because it is in Ireland and essentially this superb site for wildlife was destroyed a few years before I was born, in the 1950s. This book describes what we lost and how we lost it. The Gearagh…
Published today – The Trespasser’s Companion by Nick Hayes
This is a follow-up to the same author’s Book of Trespass from 2020 – see review here – and just as I loved the first book I love this one too. Perhaps even more so. It’s a book with attitude, and I like that. I also agree with a great deal of it, although even…
Sunday book review – Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh
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This is another book published last year, which I missed even though I knew it was coming. If the name of the author rings a faint bell with readers of this blog then it is because she won a little writing competition held here in December 2016. This is an immensely powerful book. I couldn’t…
Sunday book review – When There Were Birds by Roy and Lesley Adkins
This book is described by its publisher, on the jacket flap, as a social history of Britain that charts the complex connections between birds and people, and in a way it is. But if it were that, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it quite as much as I did. For me, this is…
Sunday book review – Wild City by Florence Wilkinson
There is wildlife everywhere and that includes our big cities, towns and villages. This shouldn’t come as a surprise really, but we are so wedded to the idea that our own activities are driving wildlife abundance down (as they are) that we, perhaps subconsciously, believe that built up areas must be the worst possible places…
Sunday book review – Tickets for The Ark by Rebecca Nesbit
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I think this is a good book and it ranges rather more widely than its extended title might suggest. The author picks up many issues connected with how we do nature conservation and why we do it in the way that we do. Much of the book is about values, and about the choices that…